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Kentucky high school chemistry experiment goes terribly wrong: plus “Bonus Lesson”

May 21, 2013 By Richard Innes 1 Comment

Risks when your local school shares data it collects on your child with others

They had a “hot” time in a Glasgow High School chemistry class last Friday with an experiment that turned out to be “all wet.”

The Glasgow Daily Times reports (subscription for full article) that a silly experiment to ignite clouds of natural gas in a classroom (lighting fires in a classroom – what a great idea – NOT!) did the inevitable – triggering the sprinkler located right overhead.

That wound up soaking all sorts of technology devices and eventually flooded numerous classrooms.

This silly stunt got caught on video.

And then came a demonstration that anything caught in a computer – such as sensitive data schools collect on students – can live forever. You see, the original video was removed from You Tube, probably at the request/demand of the school. However, copies of the video keep cropping up in You Tube like mushrooms, anyway.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Education, News Tagged With: crazy science experiments, student privacy, teachers

Once Beshear starts down the road of Medicaid expansion, there’s no turning back

May 21, 2013 By Phil Impellizzeri Leave a Comment

One excuse apologists offer for Gov. Beshear’s further adoption of Obamacare through Medicaid expansion is that states can abandon the bloated program in three years once the feds put the financial burden back on state governments.

Let’s get real, shall we?

Does anybody in their right minds even entertain the notion that professional politicians are going to pull the rug out from under more than 300,000 lower-income individuals who will soon be added to the Medicaid doles? If voicing the simple, commonsense notion to make even modest reforms to entitlement programs is considered political suicide, then removing entitlements from over 300,000 Kentuckians must be the political equivalent of detonating a nuclear bomb.

What’s worse, the type of bold leadership in line with free market principles that would be necessary to shrink Medicaid to reasonable levels is simply not present in Frankfort. No professional politician is going to remove 300,000 people from an entitlement program unless he or she is preparing for a permanent retirement for politics.

Even if we want to venture through fantasy land and pretend that Gov. Beshear or his successor would have the intestinal fortitude to make such a bold move, it’s unclear that it would even legally be permitted to do so. According to legal experts, Robert Alt and Dan Greenberg:

“[I]n fact, there is substantial reason to believe that when a state chooses Medicaid expansion, it is something like a decision to go down a one-way street” and that “legislators are mistaken to ignore the possibility that expansion cannot be abandoned as easily as it was entered.”

Indeed, Beshear has us going down a one-way street the wrong way.

Filed Under: Health care Tagged With: Medicaid, Medicaid expansion

Debate set for tomorrow on the Intrastate Coal and Use Act!

May 20, 2013 By Phil Impellizzeri Leave a Comment

Tomorrow, May 21, Jim Waters, the President of the Bluegrass Institute, will take on Tom Fitzgerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council, in a debate on the Intrastate Coal and Use Act!

WHAT: Debate on the Intrastate State Coal and Use Act, hosted by TACKLE

WHO: Jim Waters, President of the Bluegrass Institute, and Tom Fitzgerald, Director of Kentucky Resources Council

WHEN: Tuesday, May 21 from 6 to 8:45 PM

WHERE: Heeren Hall, 2nd floor of Cooke Hall, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at 2825 Lexington Road, Louisville, KY 40206

The Intrastate Coal and Use Act is a piece of model legislation sponsored by the Bluegrass Institute and unanimously approved by the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Task Force on Energy and the Environment. If passed, the bill would protect Kentucky’s constitutional rights to regulate all internal commerce, specifically any coal mining operations in which the coal is mined, sold, and used exclusively within the borders of the commonwealth.

Such a law would push the EPA monkey off our backs for the one-third of Kentucky coal that stays within the borders of the commonwealth, allow for a more sensible and locally-driven environmental program, restore thousands of mining jobs, and protect our majestic wildlife and waterways.

So come on out tomorrow to this important discourse and voice your support for Kentucky’s constitutional rights!

Filed Under: Energy Tagged With: Energy

Utah GOP Anti-Common Core Resolution PASSES

May 20, 2013 By Richard Innes Leave a Comment

Got a report over the weekend that the Utah GOP just adopted a resolution against the Common Core State Standards. To read it, go to this link and scroll down the page a bit to read:

“Utah GOP Anti-Common Core Resolution PASSES”

The Utah resolution is heavily researched and referenced. It is very interesting reading for anyone regardless of political affiliation.

Filed Under: Education, News, Transparency and Accountability Tagged With: Common Core State Standards, Education

This morning on WHAS it is a ‘Bluegrass Monday’

May 20, 2013 By bipps Leave a Comment

Join us from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. today for another Bluegrass Monday segment on The Mandy Connell Show on Louisville’s 84WHAS. Mandy says it’s “the fastest hour in radio.” Tune in and you will understand why!

Listen live online here.

Filed Under: Media Tagged With: Bluegrass Monday, Jim Waters, Mandy Connell, WHAS

Medicaid expansion is not free, not even over the next three years

May 17, 2013 By Phil Impellizzeri Leave a Comment

In the wake of Gov. Beshear’s medicaid expansion, multiple myths have been put forth by Obamaphiles – including Beshear himself – touting the benefits of such expansion.

One myth which the states are particularly fond of is the idea that somehow, since it’s paid for by the feds, expanding Medicaid to over 300,000 extra Kentuckians is completely free to denizens of the commonwealth. It’s as if the resources to provide healthcare to families at up to 138% of the federal poverty level (granted, low-quality healthcare) miraculously came down from the heavens and came to rest right here in the commonwealth, just waiting for a sickly child or two to consume them.

Of course, as inquiring Kentucky minds know, the feds can’t provide anything whatsoever to Kentuckians that hasn’t been taken from someone else, and the resources taken to fund expanded Medicaid will in large part be taken from Kentuckians right here at home.

The fact that the resources are funneled through the federal government does nothing to change this fact.

In fact, according to a recent Heritage report, Medicaid expansion will add $638 billion dollars to government spending over the next 10 years, and that’s spending from a government already $16 trillion in the hole and counting.

What’s worse, by 2017, Medicaid expansion won’t even be free to Kentuckians in federal fantasy land, because the state governments are legally required to pick up a chunk of the bill.

And all this assumes the feds actually keep their promises to fund the state’s endeavors with your federal tax dollars. Who knows when the changing tide of politics will turn this whole funding charade on its back, leaving the states completely responsible for the even more bloated Medicaid catastrophe, and the hundreds of thousand of citizens made to depend on it.

Filed Under: Health care Tagged With: healthcare

Political illusions and cheap tricks: The wrong medicine for Kentucky’s Medicaid malady

May 17, 2013 By bipps Leave a Comment

More than 324 years after architect Sir Christopher Wren constructed fake pillars at Windsor Town Hall near London to satisfy building inspectors, tourists remain fascinated with the good-for-nothing posts.

The story goes that in 1689, local inspectors warned that the town hall would crumble without additional support. Rather than fight City Hall, Wren, England’s greatest architect – who disagreed with the inspectors – fooled them by building four pillars that offered the illusion of more support but which did not even reach the ceiling.

Stunts deceiving observers by illusion are not, of course, relegated to 17^th century building inspections. They can occur in outright wallet-crushing fashion today.

Take, for example, Kentucky’s Medicaid shanty.

Inspectors have carefully examined the leaning structure and determined that adding 300,000 new enrollees into the Obamacare program – which Gov. Steve Beshear announced he will do – would add an unbearable financial weight to a structure that’s already crumbling. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Health care, Increase Free Markets Tagged With: Bluegrass Beacon, Medicaid

Mercatus and Bluegrass Scholars report: Kentucky is not economically competitive, Part 4 of 4

May 16, 2013 By Phil Impellizzeri Leave a Comment

Citizen Education Seminar Panel from Bluegrass Institute on Vimeo.

Recently the Bluegrass Institute partnered with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University to host its Citizen Education Seminar at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Lexington. The event included both Bluegrass Institute and Mercatus scholars discussing the most pertinent barriers standing in the way of Kentucky’s economic competitiveness.

Today, we present the final segment of our weekly series delivering exclusive video footage from the event. Featured is a panel discussion and Q&A session with all three of the event’s keynote speakers, including the Mercatus Center’s distinguished visiting scholar Maurice P. McTigue and senior research fellow Matthew Mitchell, Ph.D., along with John Garen, Ph.D., the Gatton Professor of Economics at the University of Kentucky and chairman of the Bluegrass Institute Board of Scholars.

The conversation was wide and varied, but whether the questions concerned the importance of new media in the liberty movement or revisiting the dependency trap, the audience in attendance had all of their queries answered by these three learned economists.

Other topics included the prospects of growing our economy from “the bottom, up,” the success of the Brazilian economy, Maurice McTigue’s fantasy agenda for his first day as governor of the commonwealth, and even the possibility of turning arid wastelands into fertile oases by planting trees in the desert.

Learn all about it inside this video.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: economic competitiveness

Bluegrass Energy Report key evidence for this Tuesday’s upcoming debate.

May 16, 2013 By Phil Impellizzeri Leave a Comment

Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell aren’t the only ones providing Kentuckians with the type of tools necessary to protect our energy sector from the EPA’s unilateral mandates – so is the Bluegrass Institute.

This coming Tuesday in Louisville, Jim Waters, President of the Bluegrass Institute will argue for the Intrastate Coal and Use Act, a bill which would guarantee to Kentuckians sovereignty over the one-third of all Kentucky coal that is mined, sold, and used exclusively within the borders of the commonwealth. Such commonsense and constitutional defenses are what we need in the commonwealth if we are to succeed in fending off the federal behemoth that is the EPA.

And we need these weapons now more than ever.

Last year alone, Kentuckians lost more than 4,000 coal mining jobs or 22 percent of mining employment. Eastern Kentucky and Appalachian miners were explicitly targeted by the EPA, and experienced a 30 percent decline in employment. Overall, mining production in the commonwealth was down by 91.4 million pounds.

No doubt, Jim Waters will reference a new report from the Bluegrass Institute that shows how – in no small part due to EPA regulation – energy prices are set to increase by 20 percent over the next ten years. These increases in energy costs will not only be a direct burden on Kentucky families, they’ll also chase business from the commonwealth, which relies so heavily on low energy and operating costs to lure industry to set up shop.

So come on out to 2825 Lexington Road in Louisville, KY at 6 PM to voice your support for the Intrastate Coal and Use Act.

Filed Under: Energy Tagged With: Energy

Common Core homework for today

May 15, 2013 By Richard Innes

First, view the marketing video for this Common Core State Standards aligned English Language Arts (ELA) instructional program for young elementary school students.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Next, play this You Tube:

Now, write a comment for us about what you think about this CCSS aligned English Language Arts material for first graders. Be sure to mention whether you believe CCSS protects students from such stuff. Use of emotional terms recommended in the CCSS aligned first grade material is optional.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Common Core State Standards, Education